TARIM RIVER – 廖亦武 Liao Yiwu

TARIM RIVER
– dedicated to Ilham Tohti, the Uighur scholar sentenced to life in prison

River Tarim, River Tarim.
River in exile, water in jail.
Died in the desert, dying of thirst.
Wind keeps on playing reeds in the sky,
eternal water, somewhere up there.

River Tarim, River Tarim.
Hounded to death, hounded and cursed.
How many grains of sand in your tears?
You have to know who your mother is,
who your mother is?

River Tarim! River Tarim!
River of prayer, river of hope.
River, for freedom you are dried out!
River, for freedom you’re all alone!

………

1) The Tarim river originates in the Tianshan mountains. It flows through vast desert areas. The river cannot find an outlet from the desert, and so the river bed changes every year. The biggest prisons and labor camps in China are found in the Tarim river area, which is therefore also called “China’s Siberia”.

2) Ilham Tohti is an economics professor at Minzu University in Beijing and the foremost Uighur public intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. He was sentenced to life in prison in September 2014 for advocating basic economic, cultural, religious and political rights for the Uighurs, the largest indigenous people in northwestern China. (Amnesty International)